The present invention concerns golf ball carrier devices. It has heretofore been proposed to provide tubular carriers to be inserted in a golf bag along with the golf clubs. Such carriers for the most part involve rigid tubes closed at one end, with the balls loaded and unloaded at one end.
See U.S. Pat. No. 1,754,495 for an example of such a design. This approach requires the tube to be completely withdrawn and tipped to remove a ball.
More elaborate designs have utilized a spring loaded piston to present each ball at an opening at the top of the tube. See U.S. Pat. No. 2,950,748 for an example of this improvement.
The addition of a spring dispensing mechanism adds to the cost and slows the loading process. In addition, neither design allows convenient removal of intermediate balls in the stack, nor inspection of these balls while in the carrier.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,756,299 describes a slotted tube which allows intermediate balls contained in a carrier tube to be withdrawn. This design requires individual partitions to be adhesively mounted within the tube in order that the tube have sufficient rigidity for handling. This requires separate loading of each compartment through the slots, slowing the loading process. The compartmented construction increases the cost of manufacture and makes removal of a ball more difficult, particularly the balls next to a partition, as the partition makes resilient opening of the slot more difficult.
Accordingly, it is the object of the present invention to provide a tubular golf ball holder which is inexpensive to manufacture and convenient in use.